Report: President Trump’s Lawyers Advised Him To Fire Jared Kushner

Donald Trump has fired a lot of people over the course of his various careers, and he was famous for doing so, but his habit has grown to odd new heights in the White House. The president has canned many government employees since inauguration, including Michael Flynn, James Comey, Anthony Scaramucci, Sally Yates, Reince Priebus, and — after multiple rounds of rumors — Steve Bannon (and those are only the big ones). Yet if Trump’s lawyers had their way, the president would have also fired Senior Advisor/Inexplicable Multitasker/Son-In-Law Jared Kushner as well.

A new Wall Street Journal report details how those attorneys felt uneasy due to Kushner’s failure to disclose so many foreign contacts (including Russian ones) while applying for security clearance. And Kushner kept on revising that form to add more contacts, which didn’t present a good look. So, multiple lawyers told Trump that Kushner was a walking liability during the ongoing DOJ and Congressional Russia investigations, but the president did not agree:

After some members of the legal team aired their concerns to Mr. Trump in June, including in at least one meeting in the White House, press aides to the legal team began to prepare for the possibility that Mr. Kushner would step down, drafting a statement explaining his departure, said people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Trump wasn’t persuaded that Mr. Kushner needed to leave. One person said Mr. Trump’s view was that Mr. Kushner hadn’t done anything wrong and that there was no need for him to step down.

Can you imagine the ruckus if Trump had agreed to can his son-in-law? Ivanka may have left her “special assistant” post, and Trump would have had to fill all those random Jared duties like diplomat extraordinaire and “SWAT team” leader, plus whatever he officially does as a senior advisor. It would have been a hassle!

Of course, a few Trump lawyers apparently had Kusnher’s back (one went on record to call him “absolutely terrific”), according to the WSJ, as did Trump’s former personal attorney (who was, at one time, leading Trump’s push-back efforts on the Russia probe), Marc Kasowitz, who denied the whole report’s validity: “I never discussed with other lawyers for the President that Jared Kushner should step down from his position at the White House.” Curiously, Trump’s legal team has been reshuffled since the alleged June uprising against Kushner occurred.